2018 is finally over. It was not one of the better years, but it does not compare to the one a lot of us lived through 50 years ago, not for me or for most of the older generation who remember the horrific days of 1968. We each have our own memories of those times, and what was traumatic for one may not have been as difficult for another, but we were all traumatized in some way, whether we were one of the peaceful hippies, a flag burning anti-war activist or someone with a loved one in the military. We all have frightful memories of that year.
Fifty years later We can look back to that year and celebrate, if that’s what you would call it, the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy, the escalation of the war in Vietnam, the riots at the Chicago Democratic convention, LBJ’s stunning announcement that he would not be running for another term as president, and riots that decimated our cities sending them on a downward spiral from which many are only now being able to recover.
1968 changed the landscape as we knew it. It precipitated a frantic move to the suburbs to get away from the racial tensions, prolonging the inevitable reckoning that we are witnessing today. For many of us, it also precipitated a change in our way of thinking. We began to question everything that we had previously believed in: the military establishment, institutions of higher learning, politicians and their motives, our government in general and whether or not their was even a higher moral authority. I believe that 1968 was the beginning of the “each man for himself” philosophy that characterizes so much of our society today. When everything and everyone you have ever trusted fails you, who do you have left but yourself?
After 1968 it seems like we experienced a rapid decline in the family as it had existed for generations. We were no longer content with what we had and that discontentment drove even more women into the workforce on a permanent basis. It was no longer a matter of working until one married and settled down. Women wanted a career more than they wanted a family. Maternal nurture declined.
So here we are fifty years later, beginning a new year and wondering as we did in 1969, ‘where will we go from here?’ We have choices. We can continue down the path we have pursued for the past fifty years, becoming more isolated and self centered. We can continue to see everything as ‘us vs. them’; we can continue to be suspicious of everyone and everything. We can continue to yell and scream and protest that the other side has it completely wrong. Or, we can decide to leave behind all of the negativity and selfishness of the past fifty years.
Nothing improved once the year changed to 1969. Richard Nixon was inaugurated as president and the downhill slide continued, imperceptible at first, but our lives and the ways we dealt with others were changing. It was not because of Nixon or the Republicans. It was not because of the Democrats. It wasn’t because of the draft dodgers or because of the Ivy league business school graduates flooding in to workplaces. It wasn’t because of a steady stream of immigrants from countries decimated by our intervention in their wars. None of these outside forces changed the promise that our country once held.
We are solely responsible for the change. We decided that material possessions, money, wealth, success, position, and prominence are more important than family, neighbors, relations, friends, and faith. Our reasons may differ, but we have all abandoned what is best for the whole in favor of what is best for the individual. In doing so, we have lost the most important thing, our soul. You can blame the current state of affairs on anything you want, but collectively as a nation we no longer have a soul.
It’s a new year, a new start. It’s time for each of us to take responsibility for this nation we are so blessed to be a part of; time for each of us to make it stronger in the coming year, not continue to tear it apart. It is within our power and does not require more than we are capable of: listen more than we speak, ask questions rather than shouting answers, try to understand both sides of any issue rather than ‘knowing it all’. Let’s do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Let’s look through compassionate eyes rather than through those that are self-focused. Let us be the change the world needs this year!